What these researchers found was that mice that showed low expression of CD274 had more aggressive disease progression than mice with high expression of CD274, who had less aggressive strains. These results echo the authors' clinical suspicion that by classifying CD274 into high and low expression groups, a more accurate prognostic picture can be assessed for each patient... This important piece of work lays the groundwork for clinical correlation studies and perhaps a new way of understanding this devastating disease. doi: 10.1111/cas.12406 The pathway to invasive colorectal cancer is a well-delineated series of steps that lead to metastasis... In this noteworthy study, Liang and colleagues studied a number of regulatory proteins in the LIM family to attempt to correlate their activity with EMT progression... They found that only one LIM protein, JUB, was positively correlated with EMT progression in colorectal cancer cell lines, and when expressed ectopically, promoted motility, invasiveness, and EMT... Extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (EHCC) carries a particularly poor prognosis and treatments for this disease are limited... To better understand the pathogenesis of this deadly disease, Watanabe and coworkers studied the cytosolic protein stathmin1 (STMN1), which is associated with a treatment-resistant form of EHCC... In a large number of tissue samples the authors were able to show that high expression levels of STMN1 were associated with poorer survival... They went on to show with RNAi that inhibition of STMN1 function improved the effectiveness of a commonly used chemotherapeutic agent, paclitaxel... Furthermore, STMN1 was associated with p27, which is involved in cell migration... Together, these findings further elucidate the mechanisms leading to the aggressive nature of EHCC. doi: 10.1111/cas.12417

What these researchers found was that mice that showed low expression of CD274 had more aggressive disease progression than mice with high expression of CD274, who had less aggressive strains. These results echo the authors' clinical suspicion that by classifying CD274 into high and low expression groups, a more accurate prognostic picture can be assessed for each patient... This important piece of work lays the groundwork for clinical correlation studies and perhaps a new way of understanding this devastating disease. doi: 10.1111/cas.12406 The pathway to invasive colorectal cancer is a well-delineated series of steps that lead to metastasis... In this noteworthy study, Liang and colleagues studied a number of regulatory proteins in the LIM family to attempt to correlate their activity with EMT progression... They found that only one LIM protein, JUB, was positively correlated with EMT progression in colorectal cancer cell lines, and when expressed ectopically, promoted motility, invasiveness, and EMT... Extrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (EHCC) carries a particularly poor prognosis and treatments for this disease are limited... To better understand the pathogenesis of this deadly disease, Watanabe and coworkers studied the cytosolic protein stathmin1 (STMN1), which is associated with a treatment-resistant form of EHCC... In a large number of tissue samples the authors were able to show that high expression levels of STMN1 were associated with poorer survival... They went on to show with RNAi that inhibition of STMN1 function improved the effectiveness of a commonly used chemotherapeutic agent, paclitaxel... Furthermore, STMN1 was associated with p27, which is involved in cell migration... Together, these findings further elucidate the mechanisms leading to the aggressive nature of EHCC. doi: 10.1111/cas.12417